I’ve been invited to give a TED-style talk tonight on whether there’s a right to free movement. Given the format, I don’t have a text and I’ll be speaking to a series of slides. But here are the basic points I’ll be making, for better or worse. (There’s no great claim to originality here, and my final slide will tell people to read Carens. Lots of undotted “i”s and uncrossed “t”s too.)
At the present time, they key norm governing the international migration regime is that states have a discretionary right to allow or not allow non-members onto their territory and to grant such members rights of residence, or not. The global refugee and asylum regime is a partial exception to this rule, but only a partial one because states have voluntarily agreed to be bound by the provisions of the Convention and could, if they chose, renounce it.
Clearly, most politicians and most voters, at least in rich countries, believe the norm is justified, with a lot of public debate focusing on whether the refugee regime is too permissive. Any party that tried to run on a policy favouring more open borders would get slaughtered at the polls, because more people think that democratic electorates have the right to exclude. But just because most people believe something, doesn’t make it true. And past consensuses on slavery, women’s suffrage and against gay marriage now look like the moral abominations they are.
But border and citizenship regimes have a *prima facie* case to answer because of the fatefulness of citizenship for life chances and the way in which they coerce people. Whilst some people are lucky enough to be born in, say, Belgium, others have the comparative misfortune to end us as citizens of Burundi or Bolivia. Some people get the valuable citizenships of states with wealth and which respect human rights; others end up with North Korea or Eritrea.
A crucial difficulty for exclusionary migration regimes is that they fail the most basic test that is often taken to justify state authority and coercion (and to underpin a duty of obedience). I don’t say that the argument for the state’s right to command and to enforce its commands coercively succeeds, even domestically. But I certainly believe it fails in relation to would-be but excluded immigrants. Standardly we justify state coercion by saying that though it restricts freedom (or autonomy) it does this in the name of freedom. Without a coercive power set over all of us, we’d be subject to the private domination of the strong and ruthless. So state coercion makes us freer than we otherwise would be. But this argument doesn’t work for excluded migrants, they get the coercion at the border, without the compensating benefit. For them, there is no *quid pro quo*.
No private person (or collective of such persons) has the right to coerce others (to dominate, enslave, restrict etc) in pursuit of their individual aims. Such domination as is permissible (such as *ex hypothesi*, the state subjecting people to law) has to be justifiable from everyone’s point of view. So we have to ask the question of whether the norm of state discretionary exclusion is justifiable from the point of view of everyone who is subject to it, or whether those people could reasonably reject it. I doubt that such a norm is justifiable from the perspective of those fleeing persecution, those locked into relatively poor countries by the accident of their birth citizenship, or those who face separation from close family because of the border regime. And we can make this vivid by imagining a veil of ignorance where you only discover your nationality (or your condition of statelessness) after you have approved a norm for international migration. Would you, behind such a veil, but knowing you might turn out to be stateless, or a citizen of Burundi, pick a norm of state discretionary exclusion? I think not.
Does this then imply “open borders”. Perhaps, perhaps not. Any norm that could be justified from everyone’s perspective would be more open than the current status quo, but it is not impossible to imagine that we could justify some rights of exclusion impartially on the basis of environmental or demographic concerns (for example). But much more open borders seems right.
But there’s a further difficulty: we don’t currently live under a global migration regime that is impartially justified. So what does justice require of states in the here and now, given that other states will (predictably) continue to exclude? My tentative answer is that they must (a) shape their policies in ways that look forward to a just regime, by attending to the interests of outsiders who have a valid objection to the status quo (the persecuted, the poor, family members etc) and doing their fair share with respect to such people and (b) work actively to bring a more just regime into being. States that fail to act in such a manner lose even a provisional right to exclude and would-be immigrants are under no duty of compliance with respect to the immigration regimes of such states but may justly evade and subvert them.
{ 117 comments }
John Quiggin 09.24.15 at 10:49 am
Even if you don’t want to concede rights to non-citizens, all existing migration regimes impose large costs on citizens of the countries concerned, without any attempt to demonstrate justification. The most obvious example is in relation to spouses and other family members who wish to live in the same country, but there are also costs for friendships, work collaborations and so on.
That’s a big problem. On the other hand, as international travel becomes more common, and the number of people potentially affected becomes larger, support for exclusionary regimes may perhaps diminish.
ZM 09.24.15 at 11:13 am
I went to a talk by Father Frank Brennan on refugees a while back, he said while the open borders argument had some justification, he did not think open borders would work practically unless there was considerably less inequality between countries, so we had to think about policies for in the mean time.
I read something by Ban Ki-moon last year, who was a refugee when he was a child during the Korean War, and he said that the issue of refugees and displaced people is really part of the general issue of development.
I think that due to this as well as there being a global approach to resettle all the present high numbers of refugees, the world has to look seriously at developing a contract and converge process to decrease economic inequality between countries. There is no good reason to have such high inequality between countries, and as we have the problem of how to have sustainable development, really decreasing global economic inequality has to be part of that, as there are just not enough resources fore everyone to live like people in advanced economies are presently.
Mdc 09.24.15 at 11:28 am
“The Law of World Citizenship Shall Be Limited to Conditions of Universal Hospitality
Here, as in the preceding articles, it is not a question of philanthropy but of right. Hospitality means the right of a stranger not to be treated as an enemy when he arrives in the land of another. One may refuse to receive him when this can be done without causing his destruction; but, so long as he peacefully occupies his place, one may not treat him with hostility. It is not the right to be a permanent visitor that one may demand. A special beneficent agreement would be needed in order to give an outsider a right to become a fellow inhabitant for a certain length of time. It is only a right of temporary sojourn, a right to associate, which all men have. They have it by virtue of their common possession of the surface of the earth, where, as a globe, they cannot infinitely disperse and hence must finally tolerate the presence of each other. Originally, no one had more right than another to a particular part of the earth.”
Kant, 1795
Les Green 09.24.15 at 11:54 am
Or perhaps we could say that, in a world of imperfect compliance, each state has a natural duty to mitigate the consequences of treating an unjustified migration regime as if it were justified. I tend to think that non-refoulement is the most urgent of those duties.
Chris Bertram 09.24.15 at 12:05 pm
Nicely put, Les, though I doubt I’ll have time to explain what natural duties are.
cahokia 09.24.15 at 2:22 pm
Part of Yogi Berras’ story:
Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra was born to Italian immigrants Pietro and Paolina (née Longoni) Berra. Pietro, originally from Malvaglio near Milan in northern Italy, arrived at Ellis Island on October 18, 1909, at the age of 23. In a interview Yogi said, “My father came over first. He came from the old country. And he didn’t know what baseball was. He was ready to go to work. And then I had three other brothers and a sister. My brother and my mother came over later on. My two oldest brothers, they were born there—Mike and Tony. John and I and my sister Josie were born in St. Louis.”
Merkwürdigliebe 09.24.15 at 3:42 pm
This is slightly outside the scope of this particular post, but while I do generally acknowledge the arguments for an individual’s right not to be trapped in a horrible dysfunctional state, I am worried about the macropolitical level of the issue.
Briefly put – if one were to implement an open-boarders regime and couple that with political rights based on residency instead of citizenship, I have a strong feeling e.g. the Baltic states, freshly dominated by an influx of Russian-speaking inhabitants, would democratically vote to exit NATO and EU and become a part of Russia within a decade. Followed to it’s logical conclusions, this would eventually eliminate all independent states small enough to be swallowed up in this way. And I hence see good grounds for resistance against the idea of open boarders in vulnerable regions.
What is the argument against the possibility of aggressive populous states weaponizing directed migration?
P O'Neill 09.24.15 at 4:41 pm
While it wouldn’t solve the deeper problems that Chris is getting at, a world in which WTO Mode 4 was implemented would definitely increase opportunities for citizens of poorer countries.
TF79 09.24.15 at 4:56 pm
“Would you, behind such a veil, but knowing you might turn out to be stateless, or a citizen of Burundi, pick a norm of state discretionary exclusion? I think not.”
Given that you might also turn out to be a citizen who benefits from state discretionary exclusion, I’m not so certain – it would seem to depend on how risk-averse you are, and it’s not obvious to me that people are so risk-averse as to place 100% weight on the worse possible outcome. Everyone who commuted today via automobile made a decision behind a veil of ignorance about whether or not they’d make it to work in one piece. “Would you, behind such a veil, but knowing you might turn out to be dead from commuting, choose to drive?” Given that millions of people around the globe drove their vehicle to work today would suggest “I think not” isn’t the correct answer.
(not that it isn’t useful to pose this question as a way of getting people to interrogate how they’d feel about open borders if their ex-post realization of birth citizenship had been different, but the “I think not” conclusion seems strong)
Layman 09.24.15 at 5:02 pm
Is it best to frame the argument on the basis of coercion? I can think of several retorts, the most obvious of which is that if it is coercion to say “you must remain over there, in Burundi, and stay away from my stuff”, isn’t it equally coercion to say “you Belgians must let me in, and give me some of your stuff?” Each regime is compelling the other to do that which he/she does not wish to do, so both regimes coerce, and in neither case is the coercion to the benefit of all parties.
It seems to me the better approach is fairness, or justice. Everyone can agree it isn’t fair that some are born in bad circumstances. Now what?
Darabe 09.24.15 at 5:23 pm
I suspect that borders are unethical in about the same way that private property is unethical, and for similar reasons–i.e., totally unethical in theory, but very dangerous to get rid of in practice.
It would take a much more virtuous and perceptive generation of humanity than has ever previously existed to prevent completely open borders from leading to a new wave of colonialism, such as Merkwürdigliebe describes above.
They would have to not only be perfectly well-intentioned, but also aware of all sorts of unintended consequences that human beings as we know them today are no good at noticing and very good at ignoring. Even if the Europeans who settled the “New World” had done so peacefully and with love in their hearts for all of humanity, it still would have been an economic, cultural and public health disaster for the native inhabitants.
That being said, of course Europe should take on lots of refugees. So should the USA.
ccc 09.24.15 at 5:56 pm
“States that fail to act in such a manner lose even a provisional right to exclude and would-be immigrants are under no duty of compliance with respect to the immigration regimes of such states but may justly evade and subvert them.”
And, we could add, we citizens of states who fail to act in such a manner have (in addition to the moral duty to vote and foment for parliamentary political change of the unjust state ) a permission and perhaps a duty to aid would-be immigrants in such evasion and subversion of unjust state practices.
Ben A 09.24.15 at 6:00 pm
So state coercion makes us freer than we otherwise would be. But this argument doesn’t work for excluded migrants, they get the coercion at the border, without the compensating benefit.
But internal state coercion does *not* make all citizens freer, even if it does make citizens, as an aggregate, freer. If you have no property, property rights do not increase your freedom, they decrease it. Defenders of property rights have a story to tell about how these rights in general increase freedom. But it will be true of all types of state coercion that they increase freedom (or provide other benefits) unequally, and may even exclude some groups of citizens entirely from their benefits.
Further, insofar as we believe a non-open border provides some benefit for people inside the border, admitted migrants will also receive the benefits of X. So the question of whether “migrants” benefit from border controls will depend if we focus on a class of all migrants (those included and those excluded) or just the migrants that were excluded.
For both these reasons, I would argue it’s a mistake to draw a bright line between a coercion at the border and coercion inside the border.
Dennis 09.24.15 at 6:32 pm
I tend to think that w/o some level of immigration control the developed world would cease to exist and the whole planet would turn into one ginormous Calcutta slum. If we let in too many people from messed up third world countries they will bring their messed up third world ways of doing things with them and drag us down to their level. If we let only a few migrants at a time most will learn our ways and become assimilated, the rest can be deported.
F. Foundling 09.25.15 at 12:25 am
IMO, a justification for the state is popular sovereignty and democracy. That is, the right of the members of a human community to collectively govern themselves. The right to self-government by the members requires a delimitation of who is a member of said community in the first place, since the state has to be answerable to the members, not to just anybody in the world who comes along. Therefore, the right to self-government absolutely *must* include the right to maintain and regulate the borders and membership of the community. Otherwise, the community will be so completely exposed to and overwhelmed by all manner of outside influences that it simply will not be a self-governing entity. Even poor and dysfunctional communities will be worse off and more dysfunctional if they can’t control who enters their own territory (and they certainly aren’t renouncing that). Rich and well-functioning communities, likewise, need to be able to control their territory and membership in order to remain well-functioning.
There isn’t much of a ‘social contract’ at an international level, but it can be reasonably said that the citizens of UN members have, through the states that represent them, accepted international law. International law includes national sovereignty and the right of states to control their territories and borders. Or, alternatively, we may hold the view that people don’t owe anything to foreign countries, in which case foreign countries don’t owe anything to them. Neither of these options includes everybody who is one of ‘the poor’ (and who isn’t poor compared to somebody else?) having the right to migrate without restictions to wherever he wants.
Chaos is not a reliable equaliser. Forget Belgium and Burundi – would Rawls want to be born into a world without functioning self-governing entities? Well, we can always experiment to find out…
On the positive side, I’m thinking those migrants might agree to work for lower wages and under worse conditions than the pampered locals, and one doesn’t need much of a welfare state to maintain them demographically either, at least in the short term… I wonder if that could be relevant somehow.
Sebastian H 09.25.15 at 1:03 am
How does this intersect with your thoughts on the logic of allowing devolution (i.e. Scotland, or Catalonia)? On first thought it would seem that the values are in sharp opposition.
Lord 09.25.15 at 1:39 am
Let’s say one country, let’s call it Germany, demands to send enough residents to another smaller country, let’s call it Austria, to resolve to force an annexation.
Chris Bertram 09.25.15 at 7:08 am
Brief, provisitional, and doubtless inadequate replies to some comments:
@7 @17 The OP argues for three things, basically: a test for assessing the justice of the norms governing migration, a guess about what that substantively implies, and a view about what states are required to do in a world where other states continue to act unjustly. Forced migration at the behest of states to undermine other states clearly isn’t a matter of free choice by the migrants, nor is it a compatible with justice more generally. So, given this unjust action, I take it that the recipient states would be permitted to respond by restricting this particular movement. But thanks for the objection, it deserves more thought.
@9 In the Rawlsian original position, Rawls denies that the parties have any particular attitude to risk, saying merely that choice under uncertainty requires them to act as if they are risk averse, because uncertainty requires the employment of maximin. In the post above, I don’t say whether choice is made under uncertainty, but I wasn’t thinking that it was. Rather, I was using the device as a heuristic to get people to think, and presupposing something like current patterns of inequality. Given current patterns of inequality, I think it would be very foolish to gamble on ending up a citizen of the US or EU.
@10 No. I don’t regard someone coming to live in my neighbourhood as coercing me. I do think I would be coercing them if I used dogs, fences, guns, and the threat of punishment to stop them.
@13 Interesting points. But I wasn’t asserting the truth of the claim that states make everyone freer compared with the non-state baseline, I was saying that *even if* that argument works in the internal case, it doesn’t work when we consider the position of outsiders.
@15, @16 Well, I think proponents of the self-determination argument have some problems when it comes to delimiting the community in the first place. If we allow communities to decide who is and isn’t a member then all kinds of unjust exclusions (women, blacks) become possible and legitimate. We don’t want to go there. So we need some more objective and defensible criteria for who ought to count as a member. (That already takes us a long way from what states currently think they are entitled to do, i.e. whatever they like.)People like Carens and Shachar have argued for social membership (anyone who is resident for a while, essentially). Given relatively open borders that could lead to the erosion of cultural identities over time (although they erode anyway with generational change). I’m inclined to live with that possibility whilst believing that, absent major economic inequalities, you’d get sufficient stasis to maintain distinctness. Naturally, that raises the question of whether, in the presence of large inequalities, peoples have the right to exclude to maintain cultural distinctiveness. (Again, empirically, I think flows of the order that would destroy cultures and homogenize cultures are very exceptional). But in the case where the economic loss to the excluded is high enough, this looks like something we should reject, the indulgence of an expensive taste at the expense of those worse off. Poor communities, on the other hand, might have more discretion to exclude, because they wouldn’t be depriving the excluded of opportunities they lack (and I think some kind of conditional norm along those lines might be justifiable to everyone.)
maidhc 09.25.15 at 10:03 am
Consider the case when an imperialist power, i.e., Britain, moves so many Indians into Fiji that they outnumber the native Fijians. It’s a very complicated case to play off one group’s rights against another.
Drastic solutions have been implemented, such as Uganda forcing all the Indians out despite their having been there for generations. I think most people would find that unacceptable.
Currently there doesn’t seem to be a robust way to deal with such questions. Some different approach is needed, but I couldn’t say what it is.
ccc 09.25.15 at 10:59 am
Chris @18: “Rawls denies that the parties have any particular attitude to risk, saying merely that choice under uncertainty requires them to act as if they are risk averse”
That is a bit too elliptical. I like the SEP’s summary of Rawls on the veil and risk ( http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/, caps added by me): “Rawls denies that the parties have a psychological disposition to risk-aversion. He argues however that it is rational to choose as if one were risk averse UNDER THE HIGHLY EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE ORIGINAL POSITION. His point is that, while there is nothing rational about a fixed disposition to risk aversion, it is nonetheless rational in some circumstances to choose conservatively to protect certain fundamental interests against loss or compromise. It does not make one a risk averse person, but instead normally it is entirely rational to purchase auto liability, health, home, and life insurance against accident or calamity. The original position is such a situation writ large. Even if one knew in the original position that the citizen one represents enjoys taking risks, this would still not be a reason to gamble with his or her rights, liberties and starting position in society. For if the risktaker were born into a traditional, repressive, or fundamentalist society, she might well have little opportunity for taking the kinds of risks, such as gambling, that she normally enjoys. It is rational then even for risktakers to choose conservatively in the original position and guarantee their future opportunities to gamble or otherwise take risks.”
Norwegian Guy 09.25.15 at 11:11 am
“Any party that tried to run on a policy favouring more open borders would get slaughtered at the polls”
That’s not necessarily true at all, especially not these days. You can point to many cases where a party supporting more liberal immigration policies have gained in elections, and where anti-immigration parties have declined. If anything, the recent refugee crisis have led to a more welcoming attitude towards refugees, not the opposite. Of course, this doesn’t mean that majorities support completely open borders, but xenophobia is a minority view as well.
Tom Hurka 09.25.15 at 11:21 am
Chris: I presume you wouldn’t say something similar about another association, the family, i.e. you wouldn’t say there should be open membership in families, so those with less good parents have the right to enter a family with better parents, where they’ll do better. Is this a difference in kind or in degree, i.e. does the argument justifying open borders not apply at all in the family case, or it does apply but the balance of considerations comes out different? I assume there’s coercion at the borders of families, i.e. we won’t let you sleep in our house or, if that’s a matter of property-rights, we won’t — or are permitted not to let you — join our family picnic in the public park.
Lynne 09.25.15 at 12:06 pm
Chris, I spent the first part of your post getting ready to argue with you against open borders: then you said open borders might or might not be required for the kind of just migration policy you favour. In your TED talk it might be worth saying that right off the bat.
Then you said this in the comments: “@15, @16 Well, I think proponents of the self-determination argument have some problems when it comes to delimiting the community in the first place. If we allow communities to decide who is and isn’t a member then all kinds of unjust exclusions (women, blacks) become possible and legitimate. We don’t want to go there.”
This concern over minority rights cuts both ways. As a feminist, I favour strong federal legislation to protect minorities from discrimination because I don’t want to have to fight that battle at the municipal or provincial level. Uncontrolled immigration would threaten the gains we have made in women’s rights. I speak as someone who, living in a vast, underpopulated, privileged country (Canada) would like to take in many more refugees than we already do, and this is a majority feeling in Canada. But I don’t favour open borders because I think Foundling above is right.
Chris Bertram 09.25.15 at 12:51 pm
@NorwegianGuy quite right, and that was sloppy of me in the OP. In the actual talk I referred to parties that rejected the right of states to control their borders.
@TomHurka I didn’t argue for open borders in the post, I said that the norms governing migration (i.e. what states are and aren’t allowed to do) have to be justifiable to everyone. One reason why the current norm of absolute state discretion is unacceptable is because of the way in which it divides and destroys families and other close personal relationships. I think that family membership is a more central to human interests than having any particular nationality. Further, it isn’t coercive to refuse to marry someone, say. It is coercive to use and threaten violence against people who happen to want to live in the neighbourhood.
Chris Bertram 09.25.15 at 12:57 pm
@Lynne I’m not sure quite how I want to respond to your point, but I think in something like the following way. Justice trumps democracy. That’s why democratic choices excluding migrants are (generally) wrong, because the democratic choosers are making a decision they have no right to make. The same goes for democratic decision that take away women’s rights or the rights of minorities. That’s a normative starting point for me. I realise that it doesn’t always help us to achieve what we want to in an messy and imperfect world. (I also happen to believe that fears about intolerant immigrants are overblown, but that’s a different, empirical point.)
engels 09.25.15 at 2:12 pm
It seems to me there’s plenty of space between the position Chris rightly objects to:
we allow communities to decide who is and isn’t a member then all kinds of unjust exclusions (women, blacks) become possible and legitimate. We don’t want to go there [ie. any community decision on membership is necessarily legitimate]
and his preferred position:
democratic choices excluding migrants are (generally) wrong, because the democratic choosers are making a decision they have no right to make [ie. decisions
to bar non-members from joining are ‘generally’ illegitimate]
I think most people would reasonably think it is the decision is the community’s to make in principle but making the decision on certain grounds (eg. racism, sexism, etc) is morally forbidden. As I understand this is how things work for eg. hiring decisions, university admissions, etc, on a broadly liberal view.
Ben A 09.25.15 at 2:17 pm
Sorry, Chris, my point was that the reason you provide for the lack of warrant for state coercion in the case of borders — namely that they do not provide a benefit to those on whom the coercion falls — apply equally to many cases of internal coercion.
Layman 09.25.15 at 2:36 pm
“I don’t regard someone coming to live in my neighbourhood as coercing me.”
I’m sure you don’t, and I don’t either, but perhaps it’s the wrong analogy. If someone used force to take your money, against your will, I think you would regard that as coercing you. I think this is the objection you’ll hear from the anti-immigration position, that allowing in others will diminish what one has, and that the diminishment will be forced on one against one’s will. Those foreigners will need things, and we’ll all be forced to pay higher taxes so they can have them, etc.
To be clear, that’s not at all my position. I just think that if you frame your argument around coercion, that’s the reaction you’ll get.
bianca steele 09.25.15 at 2:44 pm
I think Chris’s argument is very clear and persuasive, but I tend to agree with engels in the general case (from which Syria is pretty much an exceptional), when it comes to how much this should affect actual decision-making.
Possibly a weak point is here: I’m not sure a “private person (or collective of such persons)” is an appropriate description for a state.
Collin Street 09.25.15 at 2:46 pm
If someone used force to take your money, against your will, I think you would regard that as coercing you
But by calling it your money you’re question-begging, aren’t you; the proper boundaries of property rights are what the dispute is.
Layman 09.25.15 at 2:59 pm
Well, I’d say that if the only way we can argue to allow more immigration is to abolish private property, we’re in trouble. We won’t win the argument that way anytime soon.
engels 09.25.15 at 3:16 pm
Poor communities, on the other hand, might have more discretion to exclude, because they wouldn’t be depriving the excluded of opportunities they lack
Would this also mean that a comfortably off community like UK can exclude the super-rich? (I suppose that would be ‘depriving them… of opportunities’ but perhaps hard to see it as an injustice for an egalitarian…)
Chris Bertram 09.25.15 at 3:16 pm
@bianca Thanks. You write:
“Possibly a weak point is here: I’m not sure a “private person (or collective of such persons)†is an appropriate description for a state.”
I’m not sure either. But the way I think about it is roughly this: a group of persons can constitute themselves as a public power vis a vis one another, drawing on the moral powers they have originally. They collectively authorize a system of mutual and reciprocal coercion. What they can’t do is authorize themselves to coerce outsiders (except in self-defence against violent aggression etc) since those outsiders have not consented to be part of the scheme, and they remain a private collective vis-a-vis those outsiders without the right to pursue their interests by making use of those outsiders.
Of course, I’m not unaware of the enormous problems in the previous paragraph, the blithe assumption of a social contract, consent etc. So we (or I) need to think of a non-voluntaristic way of recasting things. Still, I think it remains a useful model.
engels 09.25.15 at 3:45 pm
Sorry, last point-
What they can’t do is authorize themselves to coerce outsiders
If the coercion referred to here is keeping the outsiders off the State’s territory then this argument seems to allow for a policy where outsiders are permitted to remain on the territory but can not acquire citizenship and the social rights that go with it.
Chris Bertram 09.25.15 at 3:52 pm
@engels logically, that’s so. But if we also deploy a theory of membership that grants long-term residents citizenship, then things look different. Confession: trying to make my various commitments consistent makes me inclined to think that it wouldn’t be unjust to make welfare and health schemes contributory (excluding new arrivals from benefits), though I’m opposed to that for many such schemes as a matter of policy (rather than right).
Omega Centauri 09.25.15 at 3:55 pm
“But just because most people believe something, doesn’t make it true.”
But here we are talking about how porous we want borders to do. I maintain this is an issue of values and morality, not an issue of truth untruth.
I like to think humanity could perform a sort of social experiment, allowing multiple largely compartmental entities to try different baskets of policies, so that we can see the compaotive results of numerous different approaches, and hopefully adopy elements of the ones with better outcomes. If we allow too much movement across these compartmental boundaries, then we never get to run this grand experiment, and our ability to advance towards some sort of optimum would be reduced.
We also have some eggregious possibilities with truly open borders. A meme cluster -often thought up as a religion, is very successful at keeping its offspring indoctrinated -and which also breeds at a high rate, would take over the world regardless of whether that would be viewed as a good outcome. Of course the rest of the world would wake up to this threat and conflict and probably violence would ensue.
Art Deco 09.25.15 at 4:48 pm
And past consensuses on slavery, women’s suffrage and against gay marriage now look like the moral abominations they are.
They look like ‘moral abominations’ only to people ensconced in the faculty bubble, which is why the faculty should have much less status and influence than it does today.
Mdc 09.25.15 at 7:43 pm
“So we (or I) need to think of a non-voluntaristic way of recasting things.”
Cf Kant passage above? “common possession of the surface of the earth…”
magistra 09.25.15 at 8:49 pm
Chris@35: so what rights would you grant to those who come to the UK under an open borders regime? If you allow them equal access to the jobs market, then even allowing for a minimum wage, you’re effectively undercutting all UK employees: it’s hard to imagine for almost anyone employed now that there isn’t someone else in the world who wouldn’t be able either a) to do the job more cheaply or b) demand the same pay but be better at the job. If you deny migrants full access to the job market and benefits, but allow anyone to come here, aren’t you effectively encouraging shanty towns, illegal working at below minimum wage, begging and the kind of conditions in which diseases spread? All this is likely to be harmful to the current inhabitants of the area.
Allowing free movement between regions and states was relatively simple in an era where if you were unable to support or protect yourself in the new location it was acceptable for you to die of starvation, cold or disease or be killed with impunity. The bargain that modern western states offer to the vast majority of non-citizens is: if necessary we will provide at least you the minimum threshold of goods and protection to prevent you dying (though you may go hungry and live in squalor). In the UK, even failed asylum seekers, for example aren’t left to starve if they can’t be deported and they don’t lose all legal protection. Western countries have found from experience that having a widespread class of people within the country who can simply be left to die is unhygienic, encourages crime and is simply unpleasant to be around. But the corollary is that if we’re not prepared to have people dying from poverty in the country, we have to restrict those who can come into it.
Bloix 09.25.15 at 9:36 pm
“Standardly we justify state coercion by saying that though it restricts freedom (or autonomy) it does this in the name of freedom.”
We don’t say this. We justify state coercion in the name of order. In England, the historic expression of the state monopoly on violence is “the King’s peace.” In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, the concept is found in the phrase “peace, order, and good government.” The US Constitution uses the expression “to insure domestic Tranquility.”
Weber, who originated the definition of the state as an entity that claims a monopoly on the use of force, explained that the state’s claim was that it requires that monopoly “in the enforcement of its order.”
My ongoing argument with you, Prof. Bertram, is that you give absolutely no value to the maintenance of order.
The people who are fleeing Syria and other war-torn countries are not looking to Europe for freedom. Their countries have been unfree for generations, but they never fled them before. What they seek now is peace and order. There are many in Europe who express a concern that an effort to take in so many new immigrants will disrupt the order of their societies. They may be right or they may be wrong, but you do not even credit their concerns.
Wulf Losee 09.25.15 at 10:18 pm
In an ideal world, nation-states have a primary responsibility for the welfare of their citizens–and, given that their are upper bounds on the resources that any nation-state can muster, it seems reasonable to take the attitude helping one’s own citizenry should come first. Helping non-citizens should at best be a secondary priority–and only if said nation-state has the surplus resources to commit to the welfare of immigrants. I understand that, due to unequal resource allocation, poor political planning, or by the kleptocratic tendencies of their leaders, many nation-states have failed in the task of maintaining the welfare of their citizenry. The resources of wealthy nation-states might be better spent cooperating on helping poorer nation-states develop their economies and their social infrastructure, and police action (read military intervention) where nation-states become embroiled in civil wars. But I suspect those sentiments would strike some of the readers here as the ravings of a neo-colonialist. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any ways that opening borders and the free migration wouldn’t end up destabilizing the nice self-satisfied little utopias (relatively speaking) we inhabit–and I might also point out that destabilizing our comfortable little utopias would also shake the foundations of many ivory towers that certain academics seem to inhabit.
Peter T 09.26.15 at 5:43 am
If you see the state as essentially the body exercising political power over a given territory, and the argument as one about what rights individuals possess against the state, you are on firm ground. But the state is also often conceived as the expression of the political will of a community. Which raises the issue of what constitutes a community, and the common belief that political rights and obligations are not enough – there has to be some common culture (language, beliefs etc – a varying mix with a family resemblance). The maintenance of which implies some degree of exclusion, or criteria of acceptance. You don’t get in just by being human.
Many past arrangements and some present arrangements separate the two – you could be an Ottoman or Moghul subject, but your community (with its own laws customs, judicial arrangements and local governance) was another thing – Armenian, Orthodox, Jewish, Rajput, Jain and so on as the case might be). I doubt this would work for modern states.
As for open borders, might be wise to ask the opinion of Welsh, Tibetans, Sioux, Uighurs, Tatars and similar before going too far.
Third point – the stance is unexceptional if the start line is humanist individualism. If the central issues are to take politically on board enough of Darwin’s outlook – that humans are just another species in a web of life – and so ensure the survival of the species long term, then the requirements look very different. We then need less trade and travel, and more local knowledge of and attention to the environment – an acceptance of the need for more people to stay in their places.
Lige 09.26.15 at 10:51 am
I tend to think all the supposed ill’s of unlimited migration are exagerrated and backformed explanations for a series of policies developed in the late 19th and early 20th century for reasons of populist xenophobia and national security. If open migration was suddenly allowed there would probably be a bit of chaos at the first but things would settle down soon enough and the basic inertia caused by the fact people don’t tend to really like moving away from their homes (not to mention the fact backmigration would be easier) would damper any massive changes.
engels 09.26.15 at 1:19 pm
if we also deploy a theory of membership that grants long-term residents citizenship, then things look different. Confession: trying to make my various commitments consistent makes me inclined to think that it wouldn’t be unjust to make welfare and health schemes contributory (excluding new arrivals from benefits)
I don’t think the issue is just about benefits. Couldn’t a State allow migrants onto its territory but ban them from working?
(If ‘the people’ voluntarily choose not to employ migrants than that’s not coercive, I think, and so on your contractarian view I think it’s legitimate for the State to execute that decision. To be extra-careful we could stipulate that the coercion was directed only at citizens: eg. citizens who offer employment to migrants are subject to fines or imprisonment.)
ZM 09.26.15 at 1:29 pm
“and, given that their are upper bounds on the resources that any nation-state can muster, it seems reasonable to take the attitude helping one’s own citizenry should come first. Helping non-citizens should at best be a secondary priority–and only if said nation-state has the surplus resources to commit to the welfare of immigrants. ”
This is not fact based reasoning. Advanced economies often consume more resources and labour than their territory is able to produce. For example the population of London consume as many resources as can be produced in the entire territory of the U.K. If anything the international quality of much of the flows of resources and labour in the globalised economy are a good argument for greatly reduced inequality between nations and also perhaps greater porousity of national borders.
engels 09.26.15 at 1:29 pm
Also: if (per #33) State coercion is justified by collective authorisation of citizens and is legitimate only for them, policing the migrant population becomes problematic. What justifies arresting a migrant, who isn’t a citizen, for driving the wrong way up a one way street, etc?
JW Mason 09.26.15 at 1:49 pm
It seems to me that the logical endpoint here isn’t a more just regime of movement of across state borders, but rather the abolition of the nation-state.
Bloix 09.26.15 at 2:08 pm
#46- what justifies arresting the migrant is that by driving the wrong way he might kill someone and he will at a minimum scare other drivers and snarl traffic. Therefore preventing him from doing so is necessary for the maintenance of peace and good order. You can pretend that by entering the country he impliedly consented to abide by its laws, but that’s just a fiction and it’s not needed once you accept that there is a tension between freedom and order.
If you stop thinking about the state’s deployment of coercive force as a way of maximizing freedom, and think about it as a way of maintaining the peace and order that is a precondition of freedom (although no guarantee of it), you won’t run into these problems.
Then we can argue over how much and what sort of coercive force is justifiable – how much and what kind of order is needed for much and what kind of freedom.
Bloix 09.26.15 at 2:10 pm
#47- yeah, IIIRC, I’ve said before that Prof. Bertram doesn’t accept the Peace of Westphalia, but he says I’m mis-reading him.
bianca steele 09.26.15 at 2:20 pm
Some phrases in the OP–“underpin a duty of obedience” and “coercion at the border”–are difficult to make sense of if the state is the people within the border and those obeying are outside the border. “They” haven’t promised to obey “us” and they’re under no obligation to do so. I’m not sure switching to a focus on order clears that up, entirely.
One of the good points of the way it’s stated in the OP is the way it asks people to think in terms of whether they have the right to tell others what to do, because obviously they do not, and similarly with their democratic collective.
Layman 09.26.15 at 2:26 pm
“It seems to me that the logical endpoint here isn’t a more just regime of movement of across state borders, but rather the abolition of the nation-state.”
That, or the creation of just one, all-encompassing nation-state. Then you still need the abolition of property rights, since you’ll still have lots of people with the bad luck to be born to the wrong parents in the wrong neighborhood…
engels 09.26.15 at 2:32 pm
he will at a minimum scare other drivers and snarl traffic. Therefore preventing him from doing so is necessary for the maintenance of peace and good order
Maybe so, but I was asking for the justification on Chris’ view, not yours. In #33 he says the only legitimate reason for State coercion against non-citizens is ‘self-defence against violent aggression etc’ – I don’t think this qualifies. If it does, I could have picked something even less dangerous, like traveling on a train without a ticket.
Miriam 09.26.15 at 2:52 pm
This debate is fascinating. On a practical note I wonder how in a situation of finite resources workers rights would be affected. One example might be how many pupils in a class or students in a seminar group can a teacher / lecturer reasonably cope with without adverse affects on leaning and on the health and wellbeing of the worker and their family and children Also universities currently exclude those deemed not able to succeed on and complete the course and also even capable students may be excluded due to class or course size limits? How does this work as an ethic in the context of a migration analogy? Many migrants would want to and need access to education? This would include migrants / refugees with limited command of the host country language. To be inclusive provision needs to be made for this in our institutions. One might expect Higher Education establishments having worked out the ethics of the matter might be expected to set an ethical and compassionate example. Elitism would have to be seen for the self serving oppression of others less fortunate that it is.
Lynne 09.26.15 at 3:22 pm
Bloix @ 40 Thank you for that excellent comment.
Layman 09.26.15 at 3:41 pm
“The people who are fleeing Syria and other war-torn countries are not looking to Europe for freedom. Their countries have been unfree for generations, but they never fled them before. What they seek now is peace and order. There are many in Europe who express a concern that an effort to take in so many new immigrants will disrupt the order of their societies. They may be right or they may be wrong, but you do not even credit their concerns.”
It seems correct to me that the refugees are seeking peace and order. That said, is it sensible to conclude that taking them in will result in a disruption of peace and order? Thus far, the absence of peace and order seems to be the result of efforts to avoid taking them in.
Lord 09.26.15 at 4:07 pm
Consider the homeless that wishes to immigrate to your house. What difference is a property line drawn within or between states?
The future may be where everyone can emigrate but no one feels any need but the most likely path may end up where everyone wants to and can but has no choice because everywhere else is equally bad.
Stephen 09.26.15 at 5:13 pm
ZM@45: I don’t follow your reasoning here. As I understand it, you argue that, since states import and export resources of various kinds, therefore there should be no restrictions on people moving from one state to another.
The logical connection is not clear, especially because states can and do impose restrictions or levy tariffs on resources being imported or exported.
Would you care to make your argument clearer?
Stephen 09.26.15 at 5:17 pm
Layman@55: with regard to recent migration in general, the good people of (for example) Rochdale might not agree that the effect on peace and order has been entirely beneficial. Of course, genuine refugees from the Syrian war might have entirely different effects. Pseudo-Syrian refugees, or those coming from warless countries, could be another matter.
Layman 09.26.15 at 5:32 pm
“with regard to recent migration in general, the good people of (for example) Rochdale might not agree that the effect on peace and order has been entirely beneficial. ”
I’m not surprised. The question is, are they right? This is, after all, a discussion about people’s attitudes about immigration, and I think we can agree that many people have attitudes about things that are not well founded.
What is the nature of the disorder immigrants have caused in Rochdale? I’ve read that people complain about immigrants in Rochdale, but I’ve failed to find any concrete examples of breaking of the peace, or reduction in order. Other than not being English and/or white, what have they done?
novakant 09.26.15 at 6:52 pm
If you allow them equal access to the jobs market, then even allowing for a minimum wage, you’re effectively undercutting all UK employees: it’s hard to imagine for almost anyone employed now that there isn’t someone else in the world who wouldn’t be able either a) to do the job more cheaply or b) demand the same pay but be better at the job.
This zero sum argument – “foreigners take our jobs!” – is being repeated again and again and likely will be until the end of time, but there is no empirical evidence to support it.
Stephen 09.26.15 at 7:03 pm
Layman@59: you might want to look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochdale_sex_trafficking_gang
For another example, try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal
“It was conservatively estimated that 1,400 children had been sexually abused in the town between 1997 and 2013, predominantly by gangs of British-Pakistani men. Abuses described by the report included abduction, rape, torture and sex trafficking of children.”
You may not, of course want to regard that as disorder.
Layman 09.26.15 at 7:37 pm
@Stephen, that’s terrible stuff, and certainly disorder. Which of these perpetrators were immigrants? I followed your links, but the references were quite vague on that point.
Stephen 09.26.15 at 8:39 pm
Layman: perpetrators “predominantly” ie <100% but not far off Pakistani Muslim immigrants, or their second-generation sons.
Scale it up: in proportion to the UK population of about 64 M and US of about 319 M,
suppose about 7,000 American children had been shown to have been subjected to "abduction, rape, torture and sex trafficking " by members of the Republican party. (I do not like to scale it up in proportion to the ca 250,000 population of Rotherham).
If that had happened, the reaction on CT would have been towards the upper end of the Richter scale, and quite rightly too.
But since it was only English (or as some Muslims would say, kuffar) children being abducted, etc, by mostly Pakistani Muslim immigrants …
You might want to look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derby_sex_gang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_sex_gang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_sex_gang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telford_sex_gang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterborough_sex_abuse_case
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banbury_sex_gang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aylesbury_sex_gang
These were not as outrageous as the Rotherham case (where Police Inspector, or in American parlance I think Captain, Aziz who was responsible for dealing with such things has now fled to Pakistan from where he cannot be extradited) but it does leave one wondering whether large numbers of Kuffar-despising Muslims are altogether beneficial to the previous inhabitants.
Which is not, of course, to say that all or even most of genuine Syrian refugees are Kuffar-despising Moslems.
novakant 09.26.15 at 9:03 pm
Wtf is wrong with you Stephen, you sick bastard? We’re talking about immigration and you’re trying to make some disgusting dogwhistle argument smearing immigrants with a child abuse scandal – just f off already.
F. Foundling 09.26.15 at 9:04 pm
@Chris Bertram 09.25.15 at 7:08 am
>Well, I think proponents of the self-determination argument have some problems when it comes to delimiting the community in the first place. If we allow communities to decide who is and isn’t a member then all kinds of unjust exclusions (women, blacks) become possible and legitimate. We don’t want to go there. So we need some more objective and defensible criteria for who ought to count as a member. People like Carens and Shachar have argued for social membership (anyone who is resident for a while, essentially).
Societies haven’t generally excluded women or blacks, they have just given them unequal status. The implicit analogy with US clubs, gated communities etc. (which are not sovereign / fully self-governing) is inappropriate. I agree that membership/citizenship in a sovereign community should be based on residence, and that long-time residents should be equal. But the decision whether the nation allows people to enter it and become residents in the first place is a completely different issue. Not allowing nations to decide this, and forcing them to accept everyone who would find ‘better opportunities’ there is just a recipe for conquest. And that results not just in loss of cultural distinctiveness, but in new oppression. Killing nation-states is not a democratic act (although it’s not nearly as bad as killing individual humans, but that’s another matter).
>Poor communities, on the other hand, might have more discretion to exclude, because they wouldn’t be depriving the excluded of opportunities they lack (and I think some kind of conditional norm along those lines might be justifiable to everyone.)
I don’t think it makes sense to have gradience in something as basic to sovereignty as the right to what you call ‘exclusion’. Now, I don’t mind negotiating to institute global quotas for acceptance of migrants and, better yet, directly aiding poor countries, based on the affluence of the respective society. But declaring ‘exclusion’ illegitimate at present endangers sovereignty for everyone.
@bianca steele 09.26.15 at 2:20 pm
>One of the good points of the way it’s stated in the OP is the way it asks people to think in terms of whether they have the right to tell others what to do, because obviously they do not, and similarly with their democratic collective.
Yes, this is the main ‘point’ of the OP, although I wouldn’t call it ‘good’. Ownership / sovereign control of territory is one sphere in which you have a basic right to tell people what to do – namely, not to f***ing touch it. I’m all for the abolition of private property of the means of production, but what’s being offered here is more akin to the abolition of all personal property. No thank you.
In general, I can’t believe this is discussed seriously. I am not *obliged* to let anyone inside my home just because they find it’s an improvement for them, and I don’t have to give a reason – I can have a myriad reasons (exceptions – extreme situations such as humanitarian disasters, military quartering, etc.) I have a right to control my home. You can’t say this is ‘unjustified coercion’. My people is not *obliged* to let anyone inside its territory just because they find it’s an improvement for them, and it doesn’t have to give a reason – it can have a myriad reasons (exceptions – extreme situations such as humanitarian disasters, persecuted refugees, etc.). It has a right to control its territory. You can’t say this is ‘unjustified coercion’.
It seems that most Western leftists are so overwhelmed by white/colonial guilt that they have forgotten why the principle of national sovereignty is worth anything at all. Well, that’s your own bloody problem. Most people haven’t forgotten. I don’t think you will ever be able to win over to this view either the rest of the world, or the majority of your own population.
engels 09.26.15 at 9:48 pm
what’s being offered here is more akin to the abolition of all personal property
I _think_ (from #35) what’s being offered is the denial of the State’s right to coercively control access to the geographical territory on which it operates.
Its rights to raise taxes and regulate its own citizens’ behaviour, and its citizens’ rights over their own property, including, I assume, property in land, remain more-or-less unchanged, as does – perhaps – its right to grant or withold full citizenship (although this is pending a separate and yet-to-be-deployed ‘theory of membership that grants long-term residents citizenship’).
I have been trying to draw out what seem to me to be two problematic consequences of detaching the State’s territorial powers from its regulative powers in this way:
1 migrants who gain access to a States territory in this way gain few other rights (if they don’t become citizens)
2 the State seems to be left with few powers to regulate their behaviour
But maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree.
Stephen 09.26.15 at 9:54 pm
Novakant
Please sober up.
Layman was arguing that that taking immigrants in will not ever result in a disruption of peace and order.
I have provided what I think is evidence that taking some classes of immigrants in has in some places, alas, done exactly that.
If you have anything that can be mistaken for a rational argument why that is not so, please try to provide it.
And please note the distinction between saying “some classes of immigrants have been undesirable” and “all immigrants are undesirable”.
Layman 09.26.15 at 10:36 pm
“Layman was arguing that that taking immigrants in will not ever result in a disruption of peace and order.”
No, I wasn’t.
“I have provided what I think is evidence that taking some classes of immigrants in has in some places, alas, done exactly that.”
There’s no evidence in what you cited that any of those examples were perpetrated exclusively, or even largely, by immigrants. Can you clear that up?
bianca steele 09.26.15 at 10:37 pm
F. Foundling @ 64
You don’t own the street. As Engels @65 points out,
If I think of my state’s right to keep people off my street as like my own right to keep people off the public street (which is plausible because it’s a democracy and I’m claiming the right to have an opinion about its policies) , then I can’t see that I or the state has that right.
Does the state have a better right to exclude if it justifies itself in other than democratic terms? That’s another question, which I don’t think the OP brings up.
ZM 09.27.15 at 5:45 am
Stephen,
“ZM@45: I don’t follow your reasoning here. As I understand it, you argue that, since states import and export resources of various kinds, therefore there should be no restrictions on people moving from one state to another.
The logical connection is not clear, especially because states can and do impose restrictions or levy tariffs on resources being imported or exported.
Would you care to make your argument clearer?”
My argument was a response to the commenter who said that as countries have a set amount of resources within their territory they should focus on providing for the wellbeing of their own national communities with this set amount of resources.
I was pointing out this is not fact based, as countries use resources from other countries in the globalised economy. And this is not even a recent development but goes back centuries with colonialism.
My argument was that as we have a globalised economy rather than isolated national economies, there should be less inequality between countries — just as we accept redistribution within our countries, we should accept global redistribution if we have a globalised economy.
My second point was that due to the globalised nature of flows of resources and labour perhaps their should be greater porosity of borders with regards to human migration.
I am more concerned about the refugee situation, which I think needs a global approach to resettle the high numbers of refugees and displaced persons.
I am a bit ambivalent about Chris Bertram’s open borders argument to be honest — as I am studying urban planning I know Australian cities are already struggling to accommodate the current levels of migration and governments have not been providing equitable amounts of infrastructure and services to newer suburbs on the urban periphery compared to the amounts of infrastructure and services provided to the inner and middle suburbs.
However I think if we reduce our consumption levels to be more sustainable in Australia we can probably accommodate a population about twice the current size by 2050, although I would like to see the development of a couple of new cities somewhere or a plan for several new regional size cities around the country if we are going to double the population in this way.
Since you seem to live in England I am not sure your population should rise anymore since you already consume too many resources. You should probably just take refugees and implement policies to decrease your resource consumption before you try to double your population with migration like us here in Australia.
Chris Bertram 09.27.15 at 7:11 am
Final responses, ignoring people who just want to rant about their preferred view without engaging with the argument, people who speculate about my motives (“white colonial guilt” etc). And apologies if you don’t fit into one of those categories.
@engels, lots of challenging points which I’m thinking about.
@JWMason “It seems to me that the logical endpoint here isn’t a more just regime of movement of across state borders, but rather the abolition of the nation-state.”
Or rather, a denial of absolute state sovereignty in favour of an alternative where state decisions need to be regulated and limited according to global standards. But we’re already de facto there with respect to some human rights questions and trade, we ought to be further along in relation to climate change, and my argument is just that we need global standards for migration that are justifiable to everyone.
@Miriam resources sure. But as an empirical matter, if immigrants can work and pay taxes, then they can more than contribute to the provision of schools and hospitals, and any shortages would be a consequence of political choices to spend their taxes on other things.
Bloix 09.27.15 at 4:40 pm
“a denial of absolute state sovereignty in favour of an alternative where state decisions need to be regulated and limited according to global standards.”
The name for this is “empire.” And it’s incompatible with democracy. What you are calling for is a global imperium – in this modern era of instant communication and decentralized data access, without the need for a centralized administrative apparatus, but with a set of institutions with the power to override local democratic decision-making in deference to “global standards” set by right-thinking people (i.e. people who think like Chris Bertram), without with any responsibility to any set of voters.
BTW, there’s nothing unreasonable about empire. One can argue that the emigration crisis is the result of the failure of the artificial imposition of European-style nation-states on territories that had been ruled imperially since the rise of civilization. Or one can argue that it’s the result of a criminally foolish effort to replace the sort of authoritarian regimes required to impose order on these artificial nation-states with democratic regimes. Or one can argue that the Cold War imposed a sort of quasi-imperial system that maintained order for several decades but has now collapsed. One can even argue all three in favor of the position that a return to empire would be an improvement.
If you’d like to see imperial rule for the entire world (with varying degrees of local autonomy – empires are good at that) – that would be an unpopular and highly ambitious but intellectually defensible position. But stop pretending that your goal is the promotion of democracy. That argument is incoherent.
Layman 09.27.15 at 4:50 pm
CB: “a denial of absolute state sovereignty in favour of an alternative where state decisions need to be regulated and limited according to global standards.â€
Bloix: The name for this is “empire.†And it’s incompatible with democracy.
Yet this is the essence of the EU, and the U.S., and other nominally democratic federations. Each state has a democratic government, yet exists within a larger framework. Citizens of each state have the freedom of movement between them – there is no sense of immigration between New York and Texas, nor is there between Germany and Belgium. If every country joined the EU, would that make the EU an empire? Would it become undemocratic by virtue of extending certain protections to, well, everyone?
Chris Bertram 09.27.15 at 5:05 pm
I’m glad that Bloix has decided to cut the passive-aggressive “Professor Bertram” but I must protest at “But stop pretending that your goal is the promotion of democracy. That argument is incoherent.” The OP doesn’t include any reference to such a goal and in comment #25 above I was very clear that “justice trumps democracy”.
Bloix 09.27.15 at 5:37 pm
What, you don’t like being called Prof. Bertram? I tend to avoid using a first name when I’m arguing against someone. But I’ll call you whatever you’d prefer – Chris, Mr. Bertram, Professor, Chris Bertram. I’m not belittling you, I’m just disagreeing with you.
On the justice vs democracy point: I was harkening back to your last post, in which you argued that open borders (or more open borders) would increase freedom. On re-reading, I find the justice over democracy position – that open borders can be obtained only by limiting (some people’s) freedom in the name of justice – more defensible as a coherent argument.
Bloix 09.27.15 at 5:45 pm
“If every country joined the EU, would that make the EU an empire?”
It’s an unfortunate time to be making this argument, isn’t it? If I were Greek, I would say, yes, the EU is an empire, and its capital is Frankfurt.
France pretended that Algeria was part of France, but the Algerians understood that France was an empire. Britain tried to make Ireland part of the UK, but the Irish understood that Britain was an empire. If a state isn’t a nation, it’s an empire.
Tony C 09.27.15 at 5:54 pm
“there is no sense of immigration between New York and Texas”
I take it you haven’t moved from New York to Texas?
On a more serious note, I do get nervous with discussion of abrogation/reduction of national sovereignty for reasons of ideals such as justice. The 20th century was full of bad things done to some nations (including some of those most against the EU’s forcing quotas of migrants on countries) in the name of what was considered by some people to be high ideals.
Ronan(rf) 09.27.15 at 5:54 pm
I don’t think any of those examples are necessarily true , at least without caveats. Greece is in the EU through democratic consent , irelands relationship with the UK was more complicated than simply imperial (including among the population, by the time the separatist movement was strengthening) , same is true of Algeria afaik. Legitimacy is generally contested and countries often cede sovereignty for other benefits (access to markets, commitments to extra national ideological projects etc) We need to complicate this idea of empire , would be my argument.
Bloix 09.27.15 at 6:11 pm
But I see that I’m so irritable that I’m trolling – saying simplistic things that are beyond the edge of what I really think just to provoke. I think my irritation was provoked by the link to the Hein de Haas blog post in Chris’s (Prof. Bertram’s?) most recent OP – smug self-righteousness persuaded that anyone who disagrees is either a fool or a knave.
So perhaps I should take a break for the rest of the day.
Layman 09.27.15 at 6:42 pm
“It’s an unfortunate time to be making this argument, isn’t it? If I were Greek, I would say, yes, the EU is an empire, and its capital is Frankfurt.”
Frankly, I think that’s a bit of a dodge. The issue with Greece and the EU is largely the absence of fiscal transfers between states. If Germans paid taxes which were used to provide government services in Greece, rather than being used to make loans to Greece, the problems of Greece would be greatly ameliorated.
But that’s a digression. The U.S., imperfect as it is, doesn’t have the Greece problem. Louisiana is poor, but guaranteed government services in Louisiana are paid for by the taxpayers of New York and California and Texas; and people are free to move between any of these states – democracies all- and even live and work there. My question stands: Why would a global federation along the lines of the EU or the U.S. be necessarily less democratic than are those entities today? Is there some particular size boundary at which federations become empires, or is it something else?
Layman 09.27.15 at 10:45 pm
@ Stephen: ‘perpetrators “predominantly†ie <100% but not far off Pakistani Muslim immigrants, or their second-generation sons.'
Which is it, immigrants or sons? My impression is that few of the perpetrators were actually immigrants, but that's based on omission – the fact that the media stories decline to call them immigrants, and use more vague language. Your response is equally vague, which suggests you don't know, either.
Consider these atrocities of the same nature, perpetrated by people of another particular ethnic background.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elm_Guest_House_child_abuse_scandal
Is this the peace and order we can preserve by denying immigration?
Miriam 09.27.15 at 11:52 pm
Chris The point about taxes you make is often made but where is the evidence that consumption of education, health care and many other public services is more than paid for? Has there been any research on this that goes beyond macro number crunching based on the current situation dominated currently be EU migration and those educated enough to gain employer sponsorship? I think most young families and vulnerable people are net receivers, ie their taxes don’t cover the services they consume. Interesting that Germany have welcomed those able to afford and to make the illegal journey, whilst Cameron is offering refuge to the
vulnerable in the camps. I expect the economics of each scenario will vary. The economics for economic migrants would probably be different again.
Miriam 09.28.15 at 12:06 am
I also think it’s fair to consider the needs and rights of workers and members of host countries and have a planned approach which ensures wages are not undercut and expenditure on public services does not increase the tax burden on those struggling to make a living, and that the same level of public services is maintained for those in need. Having worked in social housing the compassionate approach which led to the actually homeless by virtue of arriving from overseas being offered immediate housing with no addition to housing stock meant that those without a home of their own waited much longer and in many cases had no hope. When you consider the corruption that was allowed to exist in the system, many arriving applicants had homes abroad, it becomes hard to defend. There is then a loss of legitimacy on that the state is not perceived as offered equal opportunities. When ‘locals’ protest without the benefit of PC language they are branded bigots or racists which contributes to the rise of UKIP BNP etc. it’s a rather incompetent way of running a society for the benefit of all.
Stephen 09.28.15 at 7:12 pm
Layman@81: I think we are at cross-purposes here. When you write of “immigrants” I think you mean people who have recently immigrated, or are part of the current immigrant stream: in that sense, the Muslims of largely Pakistani origin who behaved so appallingly in Rotherham (and a string of other places) were not mostly recent or current immigrants.
But what Bloix was talking about was the consequences of immigration: and but for immigration, the segregated and hostile Muslim enclaves in parts of the UK would not have existed. NB that I am not at all saying that all Muslim immigrants, or their descendants, are segregated from or hostile to the surrounding non-Muslim peoples. Indeed, the admirable lawyer who drove forward the Rotherham prosecutions is himself a Muslim of Pakistani origin, and quite rightly horrified by the whole business.
Some might wonder whether anyone who was not a Muslim of Pakistani origins could, whithout serious risk to their career, have done so, but that’s another matter.
As for the Elm Guest House story: I would never be so foolish as to suppose that child abuse rings are exclusively Muslim. However, the example you have chosen is not fortunate: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11893906/VIP-child-abuse-ring-accuser-served-time-in-prison-for-fraud.html.
I think you have to consider that something may be true, even though it is reported in the Daily Telegraph.
novakant 09.28.15 at 9:14 pm
NB that I am not at all saying that all Muslim immigrants, or their descendants, are segregated from or hostile to the surrounding non-Muslim peoples.
I would never be so foolish as to suppose that child abuse rings are exclusively Muslim.
That’s very big of you. Seriously? You’re a complete idiot.
Layman 09.28.15 at 10:54 pm
Stephen @ 81: “I think we are at cross-purposes here.”
Perhaps. The suggestion I made was, if the refugees are migrating in search of peace and order, we should consider it unlikely that they intend to disrupt peace and order.
You offered some examples to counter that view, but it seems to me that they’re not directly relevant. First, because they don’t involve this category of refugees, and, in fact, are largely not even immigrants. These are not examples of immigrants breaking the peace. Second, is there a peace to break in the first place? If some small number of citizens commit crimes, and some small number of immigrants may similarly commit crimes, why is the former situation ‘order’ which the latter ‘break’?
Peter T 09.29.15 at 2:31 am
For better or worse, the developed world lives in nation states, the less developed world in states trying to be nations, and the broken world in nations but not states. Migration beyond some dimly-felt limit of numbers and character leads either to breaking the state or weakening the bond between nation and state. The response to the latter is either to try to reinforce the bond by emphasising what are seen as the essential elements of the nation (le Pen, Tea Party, UKIP): a culture war at the expense of immigrants, minorities and the different, or by retreat to a smaller, but more national, state (Catalonia, Scotland…). Do these have better humanitarian outcomes? Especially if pushed to the limit where the nation/state bond breaks down entirely?
Layman 09.29.15 at 3:00 am
“Do these have better humanitarian outcomes? Especially if pushed to the limit where the nation/state bond breaks down entirely?”
Are there real examples of nation/states which have been broken down by immigration?
Collin Street 09.29.15 at 3:18 am
> Are there real examples of nation/states which have been broken down by immigration?
Sure. The iroquois confederacy, the mexican republic, the kingdom of hawaii. Polynesian traditional social organisation is pretty state-like, and they collapsed in large number, although not always under immigration per-se; post-contact maori polities I think count for sure. Palestine would probably also count: a nation, certainly, and arguably a state too. The zulu kingdom was defeated militarily, but again immigration played a big role in that.
There’s probably a lot more: I’m drawing a fairly narrow border on “state”.
Tony C 09.29.15 at 3:33 am
“Are there real examples of nation/states which have been broken down by immigration?”
Well, if you restrict the question to nations/states after the rise of nationalism, I can’t think of any. But two caveats:
1) In the past any state of sufficient power would have restricted such a level of immigration. American Indian nations did not have sufficient power, and could not stop the Europeans from moving in. (Yes, I know American native peoples don’t quite fit the nationalism model, and Europeans established separate societies.)
2) Large-enough immigration can/will lead to local cultural change which is seen as undesirable by the prior residents. See New York City and Boston pre- and post-Irish immigration. This cultural change may be what people are really worried about.
Peter T 09.29.15 at 5:12 am
To be clear, my argument is more about the future than the past. Examples? Orange Free State? Sikkim? Arguably, Pakistan, where conflict between 1946 immigrants and locals has been a major driver of unrest. Since the rise of nationalism as the validating ideology of states coincides pretty much with the universal establishment of state borders, most conflict over migration has been internal. If state borders softened to the level of provincial borders, that would change.
ZM 09.29.15 at 5:45 am
“Are there real examples of nation/states which have been broken down by immigration?â€
Palestine
Chris Bertram 09.29.15 at 6:25 am
There was an argument in the OP, which was intended to be controversial (though I endorse it) and which some people (thank you) have responded to. It was an argument about unilateral coercion and the need for migration rules to be justifiable from the perspective of everyone. It rejected a norm which grants states an unfettered discretion to exclude. Objections that people don’t like cultural change, that immigrants impose costs and their children need to go to school, that newspapers report that some immigrants commit crimes are just not relevant to that argument, unless you happen to think that you would be entitled get together with your neighbours to use similar force to prevent people from coming to live in your street.
Igor Belanov 09.29.15 at 7:24 am
In the past ten comments or so there seems to be a distinct lack of consideration of the role of power. When discussing the American Indians and the masses moving west with the support of the US state you are not discussing the same phenomenon as Syrians fleeing a civil war and refugee camps in order to seek better conditions in a highly developed Europe where they still represent a tiny minority. To group both these historical situations under the banner of ‘immigration’ seems highly misleading.
Peter T 09.29.15 at 7:31 am
How does one “justify to everyone” something like – “this land is sacred to us, so no farming” (say, Black Hills of Dakota) as against “It’s not sacred to us, and we want farmland”? Or “The language of this place is Welsh, so school will primarily be in Welsh” as against “It’s now my place too, and my kids should not have to be taught in Welsh”.
Collin Street 09.29.15 at 9:55 am
Well, maybe that’s the point, here.
Stephen 09.29.15 at 10:00 am
“Are there real examples of nation/states which have been broken down by immigration?â€
Kosovo: formerly majority Serb, now Albanian.
Current unpleasantness in Ukraine and Crimea, driven by Russian migration.
Kaliningrad, arguably a special case.
Ireland, via British migration into the northern parts.
Tibet?
And as ZM says, Palestine.
bianca steele 09.29.15 at 1:54 pm
The argument in the OP is one that’s interested me for a long time, particularly because–as we lack a strong left tradition in municipal government and a tradition of community provision by the state, as England has had in the form of councils, and so on–local NGOs that provide services to residents may take an adversarial stance with regard to town or county governance, to an extent that would presumably be unsustainable in a place with a longer tradition of such things, and where services were the responsibility of the state,
Layman 09.29.15 at 2:25 pm
@ various, I wasn’t considering ‘immigration’ to be a synonym for ‘colonialism’.
@ Stephen, I don’t think the breakdown of states for other reasons – the collapse of state communism, for example – which then leads to ethnic conflict and or intra-state conflict is the same as ‘immigration’, either.
Tony C @ 90, your point 2 is I think right on the mark. It’s all about fear of the other. Hardly a moral basis for public policy, that.
Tony C 09.29.15 at 3:17 pm
Chris @93, ok, I’ll bite (and to be clear, I’m testing your argument – these aren’t necessarily my complete views on the matter.)
The Veil of Ignorance argues that we should not have extremely bad states (i.e. slavery) for people in society, since it is only by chance you weren’t born into that situation. It does not necessarily say that all outcomes for people have to be equal; only that there is some agreed-upon minimal state of quality of life for all. (It is true that one could use it to argue for equality of outcome, but this is not a necessity to its validity.)
Translating this to the current migration situation, the veil of ignorance argument would not say that everyone has to end up in Germany (or Britain), only that migration should be allowed to avoid situations below a minimum (such as barrel bombs from Assad and decapitation by ISIS). And so we end up with the current situation, where most of the refugees are in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. As long as they are safe there, the minimum state is met.
You are free to say that safety is not the minimum state you had in mind.
Stephen 09.29.15 at 4:56 pm
Layman: are you seriously arguing that the change in the Kosovo population from majority-Serb to majority-Albanian was not a decisive factor in the subsequent local state collapse?
Or that the migration of large numbers of Russians into the eastern Ukraine and Crimea (where the population was at one point, er, mostly Ukrainian or Crimean) had nothing to do with the subsequent troubles?
I grant you, willingly, that the collapse of the local Communist regimes made the subsequent disorders possible. Given a sufficiently determined and ruthless Communist government, the effects of these migrations could have been tamped down for some time. Forever?
As for Han migration into Tibet (and I should have mention Xinjiang: 1955 73% Uyghurs, 2000 45% Uyghurs) you could say that’s a matter of imperial conquest first, migration later. From the point of view of the original population that might be a distinction without a difference.
I notice you say nothing about Palestine: not that I really blame you, for the rights & wrongs there are very complex. But I don’t see how you can regard it as a case where migration has had no effect.
Stephen 09.29.15 at 4:58 pm
Layman@99: in what circumstances, if any, is “fear of the other” rational?
Layman 09.29.15 at 5:15 pm
@ Stephen
“I grant you, willingly, that the collapse of the local Communist regimes made the subsequent disorders possible.”
The collapse of the local communist regimes essentially broke the state, and everything else followed from that. It’s like arguing that foreign fighters broke the Syrian state, when in fact a civil war broke the state, at which point it was possible for those foreign fighters to join in.
“I notice you say nothing about Palestine: not that I really blame you, for the rights & wrongs there are very complex. But I don’t see how you can regard it as a case where migration has had no effect.”
On the contrary: I regard it as colonialism, so addressed it in that manner.
You do seem to regard ‘migration’ or ‘immigration’ as synonymous with ‘invasion’.
“in what circumstances, if any, is “fear of the other†rational?”
Fear of the other is natural. It’s what you do with the fear that is rational or not. Should ~300+ million Americans fear terrorism? Sure, it’s scary enough. Should they make war on the whole world because of it? Should they exclude refugees because of it? Should they kill children at weddings because of it? I hope the question answers itself.
Ze K 09.29.15 at 7:20 pm
“Or that the migration of large numbers of Russians into the eastern Ukraine”
I doubt they are capable of migrating by themselves, even the unusually large ones. Although, as I remember, in a Gogol’s story someone’s nose got off the face and started living its own life, so who knows…
“where the population was at one point, er, mostly Ukrainian”
And what point was that? Would you lay out the tragic-glorious nationalist narrative in full, please.
Collin Street 09.29.15 at 8:53 pm
> On the contrary: I regard it as colonialism, so addressed it in that manner.
I’m going to have to ask for you to specify the distinction you’re drawing here between immigration and colonialism, because:
+ some of the ones you could be using are question-begging, and
+ I think it’s possible you’ve wrongly categorised some of the examples that people have provided.
[there’s some other issues wrt how this impacts on larger discussion threads, also.]
Bloix 09.29.15 at 8:56 pm
Crimea, of course, was never mostly Ukrainian. It was mostly Crimean Tatar when the Russians annexed it by force in 1783 and began a policy of colonization, but the Tatars remained a plurality right up to Stalin’s policy of ethnic cleansing.
All of Ukraine is mostly ethnic Ukrainian, although in the two eastern-most provinces, Russian is the first language of most people. The balance of Russians and Ukrainians was affected by the Stalinist man-made famine of 1932-33, which killed many millions, mostly Ukrainians, and the subsequent settlement of ethnic Russians in territories that had been cleared by starvation of the local peasantry.
Layman 09.29.15 at 9:14 pm
Collin Street @ 105, I’d say “a land without a people for a people without a land” sums it up WRT Palestine. Using superior political might to occupy someone else’s land, on the theory that they don’t exist as a nation / as a people, is not ‘immigration’. The same applies to a number of your other examples.
Chris Bertram 09.30.15 at 6:56 am
@TonyC I doubt that, behind the veil of ignorance, you would gamble on ending up in the current situation of Syrian refugees in Turkey.
Stephen 09.30.15 at 6:42 pm
Layman@107; ‘I’d say “a land without a people for a people without a land†sums it up WRT Palestine’.
Interesting that you seem to say (I may have misunderstood you) that Palestine, pre-Zionist migration, was uninhabited. Sources?
Query hoe that applies to, say, Tibet?
Stephen 09.30.15 at 6:46 pm
layman@103: “Fear of the other is natural. … Should ~300+ million Americans fear terrorism? Sure, it’s scary enough. Should they make war on the whole world because of it? ”
You know, it would help if you released that this discussion is not entirely about the USA.
Stephen 09.30.15 at 6:53 pm
Layman: “You do seem to regard ‘migration’ or ‘immigration’ as synonymous with ‘invasion’.”
Here you are off into the wild blue yonder. Synonymous, no, of course not, certainly not, by no means … do I have to be more emphatic? But in some cases amounting to much the same thing: ask the ex-Kosovar Serbs, the Palestinians, the Ughyurs, the Tibetans (to deal with recent examples only): can you disagree?
Stephen 09.30.15 at 6:57 pm
Ze K@104: if you cannot distinguish between “migrations of large numbers of Russians” and “migration of numbers of large Russians”, I cannot be bothered to answer you again.
Stephen 09.30.15 at 7:15 pm
Chris@108: if I were behind the veil of ignorance, I would certainly never gamble on being in current Syria. Before the aborted Arab Spring, being by definition ignorant, I might well have gambled on being in Assad’s Syria rather than the current alternatives (especially if I were an Alawi, Christian, Jew, Druze, Sunni, Yezidi, Kurd, Turkoman …)
And I would like to know, before gambling on the prospect of being a Syrian refugee in Turkey, what the problems of that situation (ignoring the advantages of being an ex-Syrian refugee in Germany or Sweden) really are.
I ask as someone who spent part of my childhood in the far end of a not-very-well-heated Nissen hut.
Layman 09.30.15 at 8:05 pm
@ Stephen various:
“Interesting that you seem to say (I may have misunderstood you) that Palestine, pre-Zionist migration, was uninhabited.”
You have misunderstood me, quite badly. The Zionists did not see themselves as emigrating to an Arab nation; they saw themselves as colonizing an empty place. So, colonialism, not immigration.
“You know, it would help if you released that this discussion is not entirely about the USA.”
You should familiarize yourself with the meaning of the word ‘example’. It can be quite a useful concept.
Stephen 09.30.15 at 8:41 pm
Layman: if you could explain how being “uninhabited” and being “an empty place” are significantly different, I would be much obliged.
And if you could explain how the word “example” is relevant to this thread – I haven’t read it all, I may have missed something – I would be equally obliged.
Layman 09.30.15 at 9:37 pm
@Stephen, consider that reporting what Zionists incorrectly said is not the same thing as endorsing what they said. I don’t say Palestine was empty, the Zionists said it, because that conferred on them the opportunity to take it, as white Europeans of means. This is the justification for pretty much all colonialism – that there are no ‘real’ people there properly using the land anyway – and is not the same thing as immigration. For that reason, I say Palestine is an example of colonialism, not immigration.
Tony C 09.30.15 at 11:37 pm
Chris @108 – your response points out a problem with veil of ignorance arguments – if you use them to focus on a specific situation, then any rational person can calculate how unlikely it is to end up in that situation. There are 1.7 million Syrian refugees in Turkey (UNHCR number). There are 7 billion people in the world. This means that a random person has a 0.02% chance of being a Syrian refugee in Turkey. Plenty of thrill-seekers risk their lives with worse odds than that. The question of deciding behind a veil of ignorance whether or not to allow the situation of Syrian refugees in Turkey then becomes a question of risk tolerance. There are 12 million millionaires in the world, so I have a higher chance of being a millionaire than a Syrian refugee in Turkey if I am dropped from behind the veil into the world into a random person’s situation.
If you just treat the veil of ignorance as a gamble, a utilitarian analysis may still allow bad situations to be allowed to exist. The veil of ignorance argument is actually a useful way to prod people to reflect on other people’s situations, to put themselves in the other person’s shoes, so to speak, so that a floor of what is acceptable is established. Then we can establish policy given the agreed-upon constraint. That is why I was genuinely interested in what you consider the minimum acceptable state in this situation.
Comments on this entry are closed.